The 9th HyMeX workshop will take place from 21 to 25 September 2015, in Mykonos Island, Greece. It will be organized by the National Observatory of Athens at Saint-John hotel.

Objectives

The general objectives of the HyMeX workshops are to strengthen the links and knowledge exchange, as well as to foster collaborations within the HyMeX research community. The 9th HyMeX workshop will occur at midterm of the programme. It will be the opportunity to assess the achievements of the programme, both in terms of data collected and science results, against the original objectives of the HyMeX Science Plan (http://www.hymex.org/public/documents/HyMeX_Science_Plan.pdf). Running over 5 days, the programme will consist of plenary sessions with review solicited talks and Science Teams oral and poster sessions with an open call for contributions to present and discuss recent scientific progresses regarding the Mediterranean water cycle. Leer más de esta entrada

Abstract

The present paper shows an in-depth analysis of the evolution of floods and precipitation in Catalonia for the period 1981–2010. In order to have homogeneous information, and having in mind that not gauge data was available for all the events, neither for all the rivers and stream flows, daily press from a specific newspaper has been systematically analysed for this period. Furthermore a comparison with a longer period starting in 1900 has been done. 219 flood events (mainly flash flood events) have been identified for the period of 30 years (375 starting in 1900), 79 of them were ordinary, 117 of them were extraordinary and 23 of them were catastrophic, being autumn and summer the seasons with the maxima values. 19% of the events caused a total of 110 casualties. 60% of them died when they tried to cross the street or the stream. Factors like the evolution of precipitation, population density and other socio-economical aspects have been considered. The trend analysis shows an increase of 1 flood/decade that probably has been mainly due to inter-annual and intra-annual changes in population density and in land-use and land-cover.

MEDFOR emphasis is on educating the leaders of the future generation of engineers, managers, researchers and teachers involved in forestry and natural resources management, providing them a solid scientific habilitation and the competences for the new challenges of the future forest sector. Leer más de esta entrada

One of the costliest natural hazards around the globe is ﬂash ﬂoods, resulting from localized intense convective precipitation over short periods of time. Since intense convective rainfall (especially over the continents) is well correlated with lightning activity in these storms, a European Union FP6 FLASH project was realized from 2006 to 2010, focusing on using lightning observations to better understand and predict convective storms that result in ﬂash ﬂoods. As part of the project, 23 case studies of ﬂash ﬂoods in the Mediterranean region were examined. For the analysis of these storms, lightning data were used together with rainfall estimates in order to understand the storms’ development and electriﬁcation processes. In addition, these case studies were simulated using mesoscale meteorological models to better understand the local and synoptic conditions leading to such intense and damaging storms. As part of this project, tools for short-term predictions (nowcasts) of intense convection across the Mediterranean and Europe, and long-term forecasts (a few days) of the likelihood of intense convection, were developed and employed. The project also focused on educational outreach through a special Web site http://ﬂashproject.org supplying real-time lightning observations, real-time experimental nowcasts, medium-range weather forecasts and educational materials. While ﬂash ﬂoods and intense thunderstorms cannot be prevented, long-range regional lightning networks can supply valuable data, in real time, for warning the public, end-users and stakeholders of imminent intense rainfall and possible ﬂash ﬂoods.